UTC Offset in PHP
Solution 1:
date('Z');
returns the UTC offset in seconds.
Solution 2:
// will output something like +02:00 or -04:00
echo date('P');
Solution 3:
timezone_offset_get()
$this_tz_str = date_default_timezone_get();
$this_tz = new DateTimeZone($this_tz_str);
$now = new DateTime("now", $this_tz);
$offset = $this_tz->getOffset($now);
Untested, but should work